I anticipate a lot of character deaths, and that's fine, but it seems to me that rolling up characters constantly would be quite the drag the more complex the rule set, so I'm leaning towards running this with WB. But is character generation really that more tedious for newer players in Complete? Thoughts?

I think the biggest time difference is using the b-t-b spell acquisition rules in core/complete.

Not Rappan Athuk, but I ran a WB campaign in my own mega-dungeon that resulted in a lot of character deaths and it was not that big of a deal having the players rolling up new ones at the start of each session. I allowed liberal use of meatshields also (we had 2-4 each session), so that helped cut down on the frequency of PC deaths. After 20-something sessions the survivors were up around 4th-5th level.

I've been thinking about starting my next campaign with 0-level characters, à la DCC. Each player gets 4, each of which take a minute or two to roll up, and you expect some or all of them to die. When they do, roll up some more, but if they survive that first foray, make them 1st level and keep moving. There are some decent 0-level PC rules in the back of Pete Spahn's Dolmvay book that could be adapted.

I've been toying with the idea of actually starting the players off the western edge of the RA wilderness map in The Keep on the Borderlands. The road that runs past the caves would meet up with the Coastal Road off the northern edge of the RA map and the river leads to Zelkor's Ferry downstream. It seems like a perfect fit - just have to add Orcus imagery to the evil temple in the CoC!

We could start out with WB rules and gradually convert to Complete by the time they get upriver to the Ferry.

Or possibly starting them off in Village of Hommlet; the mote house would just be another extension of RA. In this case I would just start with Complete.

Dunno.

Edit: In either case, the party would be about 3rd/4th level by the time they hit RA and the players would be a bit more experienced at surviving => less character deaths.

The coastal road is supposed to lead north and south to cities/kingdoms. I'm not sure that I will be using the FGG default campaign setting, so instead, the road north leads to... Blackmoor! And the road south leads to... wait for it... Greyhawk!

I think it would all shoehorn in nicely on the original LG campaign map. What do you think?